M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E E I G H T :

WALTER
SIMONSON
©2006
& ©2006
Inc.
Characters, Inc.
TM &
Marvel Characters,
characters TM
All characters
Marvel
All

By Eric Nolen-Weathington
& Roger Ash
 Modern Masters Volume Eight:

WALTER SIMONSON
Table of Contents
Introduction by Michael Moorcock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Part One: “Well, This is Nice. What Else Can You Do?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Interlude One: Archie Goodwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Part Two: Enter Manhunter... and DC Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Interlude Two: John Workman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Part Three: In Space, No One Can Hear You Draw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Part Four: “It’s Nice to Be Best Known for Something” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Part Five: “X” Marks the Spot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Part Six: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Interlude Three: Star Slammers Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Part Seven: Gods and Champions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Part Eight: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

3
 Introduction
W
alter Simonson is the nicest guy in comics. It
wouldn’t matter if he was the meanest man in
comics. He is one of the masters of this
genre, both as a writer and, of course, as an artist. Only
his old friend and colleague Howard Chaykin is his liv-
ing equal in original story-telling powers. They have
quite a lot in common and I have had the pleasure of
working with both of them. What we all three have in
common is that if you want our best work delivered on
time, you had better lie about the deadline. In fact
Walter, like me, assumes you are lying about the deadline
and once told me, in an aggrieved tone, to explain his
lateness, “Hey, they gave me the right deadline... who
does that ?”
Like me, he is used to using adrenaline not merely to
get his work to the
publisher, but also to
solve narrative prob-
lems. My scripts tend
to require a lot of nar-
rative solutions and
not only has he never
let me down, he has
always improved on
the story, the character
or the image. He is
not only the nicest
guy in comics, he is
probably the most
conscientious guy in
comics, as far as inter-
preting another’s story
is concerned. Many
times he has called me
and said modestly,
“Tell me I’m an idiot
for suggesting it, but how about if we—?” And I don’t
remember ever turning a suggestion down. He is, in
other words, an absolute joy to collaborate with.
Although I first met Walter in 1979, when Howard
Chaykin introduced us at their old Upstart office, we
didn’t start working together until the ’90s, when DC
was doing a twelve-issue series, Michael Moorcock’s
Multiverse, which still exists in collected form and which
I’d recommend to anyone who wants to marvel at some
superb artwork, even if they don’t think much of the
writing or ideas. We became natural collaborators. I tend
to demand a lot of work from the artists with whom I
work, packing a lot of narratives into a very small space.
I get grumpy about artists who simplify or do what I
4
regard as a skimped job. I want depth and texture and a
dozen narratives working at once. Walter’s own models
are some of the finest daily comic strip artists ever to be
reproduced on cheap newsprint. In his own introduction
to the On Stage strips of Leonard Starr, Walter shows how
he understands both the problems and the solutions of
keeping a narrative going not only on a day-to-day basis
but also of incorporating a Sunday page which might or
might not be seen by the same reader and had to be pro-
duced so that it could exist as a narrative of its own.
I have written and edited all kinds of comics since
the age of 16, from 64-pagers to serial strips and have
had the privilege of working with some of the greatest
artists in the business, including Frank Bellamy, the
Embleton brothers, Don Lawrence, Jim Cawthorn, Mal
Dean, and Howard
Chaykin, all of whom
were also admired
masters of their craft.
All of them taught me
something. It was a
joy to work with them
and until I started
working with Walter I
had already enjoyed
some great high
points. With Walter it
has all been high
points. He is a great-
hearted man by
nature, constantly
entertaining at the
house he shares with
his wonderful wife
Louise and their two
dogs (and their vast
library), and is notoriously generous with his time as he
is with his hospitality. He has a tremendous work ethic
but at root will always put human relationships first. His
wide circle of friends and relations will confirm that.
I am always in awe of someone with a talent for
draughtsmanship, something I value enormously in an
artist. In fact I hate artists who, in fantastic art especially,
hide their weaknesses with a lot of baroque flourishes or
distorted perspective. I don’t know an incident where
Walter has “faked it”... that is, obscured a panel’s weakness
in some way. I don’t know a time when he has “lifted”...
that is, copying another artist’s work because he is unable
to draw what is demanded of him. I know, for instance,
that if you want crows in a story, then by God Simonson
Part 1:
What Else Can You Do?”
MODERN MASTERS: You were born in Tennessee?
WALTER SIMONSON: That’s right.
MM: When was that?
WALTER: September 2, 1946, in Knoxville.
MM: Then you moved to Maryland?
WALTER: My
dad worked for
the Department
of Agriculture in
Soil Classification
& Correlation. He
was promoted and
we moved to
Washington, DC. My
parents took a home in
the Maryland suburbs. I really
grew up in College Park. I was
just a little over two-and-a-half
when my parents moved. My only
memory of Tennessee is I can
remember being in the back seat of a
car on my knees and watching a
white house disappear around a cor-
ner. I know, for whatever reason, that’s
the house I lived in the day we moved.
MM: Any siblings?
WALTER: I have one younger brother
named Bruce. He’s three-and-a-half years
younger than I am. He’s a professor of
Geology at Oberlin College in Ohio.
MM: Were you always into art
when you were growing up?
WALTER: As far as I can remember. What
my mom told me is that apparently I
began drawing younger than I can remember.
And then I quit. My mom was very sad because
it’s always nice to have artistic children. But when I
was four years old, I had a barely diagnosable case of
mono. Mostly mono just wipes you out and you’re in bed
for several weeks while you’re recovering. Of course,
“Well, This is Nice.
you’re just bored stiff and we didn’t have a television then,
but we had a radio. My mom brought me pencil and paper
to while away the time in hopes that I’d begin to draw
again, which I did. After that, as far as I know, I never
stopped. I really don’t remember not drawing.
MM: When did you start reading
comics?
WALTER: I read them from as young
as I can remember. My parents wanted
to encourage both me and my brother
to read. They thought comics were fine
for that purpose, so they bought some
comics for us and we bought some with
our allowances. In the dining room there
was a toy shelf that my father had built
for all the different toys we had, and one
corner of that was reserved for all our
comics. We had a pile of comics about a
foot or a foot-and-a-half high.
This was the ’50s, and in the ’50s
there were comics about every-
thing. Dell and DC were the
ones primarily distributed
where we lived. There were
Western comics based on tel-
evision shows like Cheyenne
and Sugarfoot; Little Ida Iodine
and Little Lulu; the Duck
stuff—Carl Barks’ Ducks—
all the Disney comics. We
bought Classics Illustrated
comics. We read super-heroes
as well. Later on, some of the
Mystery in Space. I was in
high school by that
time. I really read
comics a lot when I was
a kid. We had subscrip-
tions to Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories
when I was young. Then, when I was
maybe a sophomore in high school, I
had a subscription for a while to Turok, Son of Stone. Hey,
Indians and dinosaurs, it couldn’t be better.
MM: Did you have any favorites?
6

WALTER: I liked them all. I didn’t have
favorites in that sense, but I clearly liked
Turok because I got a subscription to it.
That was the work of Alberto Giolitti. He
did a lot of comics for Dell. Incredibly
solid drawing. Nice blacks, nice design,
good storytelling. He was really a good
comic book artist.
I was a big fan, without knowing who
they were, of Carl Barks and John
Stanley. I loved the Duck stories, both
the Donald Ducks and the Uncle Scrooges.
And I love the Little Lulus. I think I
particularly loved the Witch Hazel
stories in Little Lulu, but I liked them
all. Including her bouts with Tubby.
MM: Hearing you talk at con-
ventions, you seem very much
a storyteller. Is that something
you’ve always wanted to do?
WALTER: I saw the movie
Fantasia when I was in third
grade. My dad took me to see
it. I was entranced by the
dinosaurs in Stravinsky’s
“Rite of Spring” adaptation.
From that point on, I wanted
to be a paleontologist and
study dinosaurs. My dad is a
scientist, and although he’s
younger than I am, my
brother became a scientist as
well. I didn’t know anybody
who did art for a living. I
had no idea how that could
be done. I don’t think I ever
thought about doing art or
doing storytelling and such.
I was certainly chatty and
told enough stories of
my own when I was
younger. I drew little
spacemen climbing
across my school
notes, stuff like that.
It wasn’t really until the
end of my senior year in col-
lege when I was a geology major
that I decided that paleontology
was not really what I wanted to
pursue professionally. At the
time, I had no other ideas. It Previous Page: Back
wasn’t like I put it aside in order cover art for the Star
to do comics. I put it aside because I could Slammers: Chapter IV
tell it was not where I wanted to go. mini-comic, which was
Although I still liked dinosaurs, the outdoor published as part of an
life of the paleontologist I learned from effort to bring the World
experience just was not gonna be the kind Science Fiction
of life I wanted to live. So I took some time Convention to
off. I re-applied to college. I went back to Washington, DC.
school. I went to art school this time, again Above: Before he
turned pro, Walter often
as an undergraduate—I was treated as a
contributed artwork to
transfer student. I went to the Rhode
various fanzines, such as
Island School of Design [RISD]. I this cover to Gore
was an Illustration major there.
Creatures #18 and this
When I was in college the first illustration of the coolest
time, that was the mid-’60s when creature of them all,
Marvel was doing its “Golden Age” Frankenstein’s monster.
work. That was when Stan and Jack Left: Walter shows he’s
and Ditko and Don Heck and George a bit of a “duck man”
Tuska and all these guys were doing just himself.
great work. I had kinda quit reading Star Slammers ™ and ©2006
comics by the end of high school. At Walter Simonson. Uncle
Scrooge ™ and ©2006 Walt
the end of my freshman year/beginning Disney. Gore Creatures ™ and
of my sophomore year I discovered ©2006 respective owner.
Marvel Comics. In particular I discov-
ered Thor. I had been a Norse mythology
fan from when I was a small boy. My par-
ents had, and I still have, a book from
about 1893 about Norse myths.
7
 So when I discovered the Thor comic, I was quite MM: A noticeable element of your art is your signature.
taken with it. Very quickly, I began reading all the How did you develop that?
Marvel Comics, which back in those days cost about
WALTER: Pretty simply, really. Somewhere in the sum-
15¢. There were like eleven of them so you could liter-
mer of my junior year in high school I had been drawing
ally buy all the comics and get everything. I began
a lot of pictures. I drew tons of dinosaurs. Tanks. Big
branching out; I read more DCs. By the time I went to
things that broke stuff. And it occurred to me that really
art school I had begun to become interested in comic
cool artists have signatures that are really
books and in trying to draw comic books. I
nifty. I decided that I needed a better signa-
hadn’t really quite thought of comics as a
ture. At the time, I was block printing the
profession, but I began doing little bits of
word Simonson with a dash at either end.
my own continuity—four pages of this, five
Just not very cool. I think I thought about
pages of that. That was really my first
maybe trying to fit it inside the silhouette
crack at trying to do continu-
of an animal somehow. My mom suggested a
ity and telling a story. I
dinosaur since I was a big dinosaur fan. I drew some
found I enjoyed it.
outlines of dinosaurs and tried to fit the word Simonson
Once as a child, I had tried to do a comic. I couldn’t
inside them. As you can imagine, it didn’t fit too well
letter very well. My pages were the same size as comic
inside lots of them. But the first one I tried was what
book pages because who knew that comic book pages
was then called a Brontosaurus—now it’s called an
were drawn big? So I drew them small on manilla paper
Apatosaurus. That worked okay. My early signatures
and I colored them with crayons. I put them in my dad’s
were much more in proportion with the actual
typewriter and typed in the captions so the printing
dinosaurs. Of course the signature drags its tail on the
would look good. I made it through about a page-and-a-
ground and we now think the Apatosaurus didn’t. What
half before I burned out on it. The comic was modestly
that really means is that my signature is the only
entitled The Origin of Life [laughter], because I had read
remaining Brontosaurus in captivity. [laughter]
some stuff about the origins of life that I thought was
really cool so I wanted to do a comic book of it. MM: You did a whole “Thor Annual” at one point.
8
 drawings, if you get close to
them, they’re full of dots and
dashes and just slashes with the
pencil. Yet when you back up
from them, they coalesce
and become a picture.

MM: How did you

go from the Rhode
WALTER: Island School of
I didn’t do Design into comics? Previous Page: Pages
the entire 24 and 25 from Walter’s
comic. I did 30- WALTER: I was at “Thor Annual,” much of
some pages. Then I RISD for three years. which was later used—
decided I didn’t like My senior year we were though redrawn—when
my inking. I was going required to do a degree project of he took over Thor.
to quit drawing it until I got my inking some kind. As a junior I had a teacher Left: Panel detail from
better, then I would go back and finish the named Tom Sgouros. Tom was the head of Walter’s “Thor Annual.”
comic. the Illustration department and taught the Below: The cover to the
Star Slammers: Chapter IV
juniors. He had his students do a series of
MM: How old were you when you were mini-comic.
individual assignments over a week or two
doing that? weeks, one right after the other. But Tom Surtur, Thor ™ and ©2006
Marvel Characters, Inc. Star
WALTER: I was a sophomore in art school also had students do an over-arching project Slammers ™ and ©2006 Walter
so I was 22, 23 probably. Fourteen years that you worked on over the two semesters. Simonson.

later, I got the gig to do Thor at Marvel I had spent the year between college
Comics—to write and draw it—and I told and RISD living at home, working in a
that story. That was the story I had done in bookstore right across from the University
the “Annual.” My inking was better. [laughter] of Maryland in College Park. While I was
at the Maryland Book Exchange, I took
MM: Who are some of your artistic influ- care of all the science fiction. My ambition
ences? at the time—the field was smaller then—
was to try and have at least one copy of
WALTER: Oh, man. Kind of the usual sus- every science-fiction paperback that was
pects for reading American comics. Kirby and then in print in the
Ditko clearly. Not so much artistically exact- store. I ended up
ly, but Archie Goodwin was really a mentor meeting a few guys
for me when I first got started in comics. I who came by to
learned a great deal working with Archie; I browse the collec-
took a lot from him. Jim Holdaway, who was tion who belonged
the original artist on Modesty Blaise—an to the Washington
English newspaper strip—was a gigantic Science Fiction
influence. It isn’t so obvious in my stuff in Association—
some ways, but there’s a lot of Holdaway, WSFA for short.
especially his approach to pen work that real- Eventually I went
ly is in my stuff. Moebius and Mezieres from to some meetings,
France, Palacios from Spain. Many others. I joined up and
Beyond that, American illustrators, espe- became a mem-
cially out of the Howard Pyle school—the ber. I knew a lot
N.C. Wyeths and Pyle himself. They did of the guys.
work where you see the picture at two levels. About the
You see the picture both as depth—the actu- time I was a jun-
al picture you’re being shown—and you’re ior at RISD,
also aware simultaneously of the picture as about 1970,
surface because they use bold brush strokes. WSFA was
The work of Van Gogh is a good example of gearing up to
that. If you’ve ever seen any of Van Gogh’s
9
Part 2: Enter Manhunter...
and DC Comics

MM: How did you move from Archie being your editor job. One was that Don got an invitation to the Butler
to working with him on “Manhunter”? Bonham family reunion in Texas. The other was that—
Archie told me this many years later; I didn’t realize it at
WALTER: Archie, as I said, kept feeding me little stories. the time—that job is what persuaded him that I could
Then I got a couple other gigs. I helped Howard Chaykin draw stuff besides science fiction.
on Sword of Sorcery. He was penciling Sword of Sorcery, which He had had an idea for doing a back-up story for
was the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stuff of Fritz Leiber. Right Detective Comics, which he was editing. He was going to
after I got here, he was working on issue #3. I went out to do a lead Batman story and then have an eight-page
his house in Queens and ghosted some panels for him. So short story in the back. He thought he would try to
probably the first stuff I ever had in print were three panels invent a character and do him in a way that contrasted
of ghost work that were in Sword of Sorcery #3. Eventually I with Batman. While Batman was dark and grim and
did some other work for Denny O’Neil on Sword of Sorcery very urban, this would be a guy in
myself—I penciled and inked one issue. So I had other brighter colors and the whole world
things I was doing in the middle of all this. would be his stage. Where Batman was
Finally, Archie gave me a little three-page job on the more or less an empty hand combatant, this
Alamo. A friend of mine named Don Krarr had guy would carry weaponry. He asked me if
written it. The Mexican army had I’d be interested in drawing it. I liked Archie’s
come to the Alamo, stuff. I was interested. I thought, “Cool!” I had
but they hadn’t gotten along with Archie really well, and we
completely closed had become pretty good friends by that time. I
around them, and a was a big admirer of his work.
guy named James Butler We spent some time working
Bonham volunteered to leave Manhunter out. It was a character DC
the Alamo and find reinforcements. owned. DC had published the
Bonham went Simon/Kirby “Manhunter”
out and stories back in the ’40s, so
learned that they had a trademark
there were no on the name. Archie
relief troops essentially came up
coming. with a new character
Instead of say- with a healing factor,
ing adios, he clones, and a lot of
broke through plot ideas. He showed
Mexican lines me a long list of possi-
and rode back ble names he’d written
into the out for the character.
Alamo to tell Eventually, we settled
them that on Paul Kirk because
there was no that was the name of
help coming. the Simon/Kirby
On the last Manhunter in the ’40s.
day, he was We didn’t really do it
killed along at the time because
with the oth- we had planned to
ers. Two link the characters
things came together. We did link
out of that
16

them together later, but in the beginning we
just thought one name is as good as another,
and why the heck not?
The clone idea was Archie’s. I had no
ideas as far as what the character was
about or how he worked or any of that
stuff. My input was in design; I designed
the character. His face was a combination
of Charles Bronson and Bela Lugosi. I used
Bronson’s eyes, which are slightly turned
down at the outside. I used the very strong
nose, thin lips, and chin of Lugosi. That’s
where the face came from.
Initially, “Manhunter” was full script, but
eventually we were working Marvel style.
Somewhere around the third issue we
thought it would be kinda fun to actually
make it the same guy from the old Kirby
“Manhunter,” because we only had eight
pages. We were doing 20-page stories in
eight pages. I was doing a lot of panels on
the page. We thought making him the other
character would open up his backstory,
given our limited space.
Eventually, Archie was
going to leave DC. He got a
job at Warren, where he had
been before, and Julie
[Schwartz] was taking over
Previous Page: Cover
Detective. He was going to
art for Sword of Sorcery
maybe run “Elongated Man” as #5, featuring Fritz
a back-up feature. Leiber’s Fafhrd and the
“Manhunter” was coming to Grey Mouser.
an end whether Archie was Left: Page 3 of
there or not, and I didn’t want “Decision,” a tale of The
to do the character without Alamo in Star Spangled
Archie because the two of us War Stories #172.
worked so closely together on Below: Preliminary head
that character. We knew from sketches of Paul Kirk, the
about the fifth chapter on that Manhunter.
the series was ending. We had Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser ™
and ©2006 Fritz Leiber.
already talked about doing a
Manhunter, Star Spangled War
Batman crossover with Stories ™ and ©2006 DC
“Manhunter” because he was Comics.
in Detective Comics. “Let’s go out
in a blaze of glory. We’ll put
Batman in the story, we’ll use
the whole 20-page story, and
we’ll wrap up our series.”
MM: Could you talk a
little bit more
about designing
Manhunter?
WALTER: Some of the ele-
ments I can remember, some I
have no idea where they came
from. I have no idea where the
boots came from. I don’t know
what the hell I was thinking. It’s
comics, you don’t really have to
run in them. You try to run in
those in real life, you’d kill
yourself in five seconds, I
don’t care how much practice
you’ve had. [laughter]
The flared shoulder thing
he wore came from the movie
Yojimbo by [Akira] Kurosawa. I
had a little black-&-white TV
back then, and during the time I
was working on the Manhunter
designs, Yojimbo was on. Right in the
beginning of the film there’s a kind of
town crier who walks through the town.
He’s wearing a shoulder thing like that. I
think it drops off as a cape in the back. I
17
have an old drawing of Manhunter where I thought about giving him a short
cape, but in the end it seemed a little too awkward. So I just made the thing
symmetrical front and back.
Because we were giving him Eastern martial
arts fighting skills, we gave him throwing stars.
Initially I drew him with nine throwing stars,
because nine is a mystic number in the East.
He had three on each shoulder, he had one
on his belt, and one on the back of each of
his gauntlets. Somewhere along the way I
realized that drawing nine of these every time I
drew the character was just going to be a night-
mare. [laughter] I quickly abandoned that for two
throwing stars, one on each shoulder.
Archie had a book called Asian Fighting Arts,
or something of that sort, with all kinds of stuff
from China, Okinawa, and Japan. You name it, it
was in there. They had weapons from India and they
showed the Bundi dagger. That’s how Manhunter got that.
The idea was he might have different weapons at different
times. The strip didn’t run long enough for that to really develop.
The Broomhandle Mauser came about because I had a friend,
Steve Mitchell, who had a replica Broomhandle Mauser, and I think
he may
have sug-
gested it. It
looked great.
They even had a
stock
you
could
click
into it to make it a shoulder fire if you
needed to.

MM: Something that I think really worked for the story

is that things got unveiled as you went along. Did that
have to do with the way you were working together on
the story?

WALTER: It was really Archie’s doing. The idea of creat-

ing a puzzle at the beginning and then gradually solving
it, I think that was probably Archie’s initial idea for the
story structure. It wasn’t created originally to be a limited
series. Archie did not know when we started that he’d be
leaving DC. I’m not sure how it would have played out
if we’d done 25 episodes instead of seven. My work gets
a lot better from the first episode to the last episode. I
got control of the figure work and my inking in a way
that’s clearly visible by about the middle of the third
episode. The difference in the inking between the first
and last episode is quite strong.

MM: Did you ever hear any reaction to killing Paul

Kirk?

18

WALTER: Not from fans. I think we
might have gotten some letters, but I
wouldn’t have seen them. Most of the
reaction I got from that strip was profes-
sional. We got a lot of professional recog-
nition out of the strip. That’s what made
my professional reputation. When I started
that strip I was just one more new guy
doing comics. When it was over, people
knew who I was professionally. I didn’t
have any problem finding work after that.
MM: And you won a few awards for that,
too.
WALTER: The Academy of Comic Book
Arts (ACBA) was awarding the Shazam
Award. It was a block of lucite with a little
Shazam arrow inside. In ’73 and ’74,
between us Archie and I won six awards, all
really because of “Manhunter.” Archie won
“Best Writer” two years in a row. We won
“Best Short Story” two
years in a row. We won “Best Long Story”
for the final story with Batman. Jim Starlin
and I shared “Outstanding New Talent.”
Previous Page: Early
MM: You did eventually return to Manhunter design sketch
Manhunter for the Special Edition. That featuring a short cape
seems like it would have been a tough and nine strategically
story for a couple reasons: You were telling placed shuriken, and the
it wordlessly, and you were working on it death knell for Paul Kirk
after Archie passed away. in Detective Comics #443.
Above: By the time
Detective Comics #440 hit
WALTER: Those are good reasons why it
was tough. It was difficult. DC had asked the stands, Walter’s art
Archie when he went back to work for them had improved by leaps
and bounds. The first
in ’89 or so if we would do a new
two pages of that issue’s
Manhunter story together. They could
chapter of “Manhunter.”
reprint the original series and put a new
Manhunter ™ and ©2006 DC
story in for the new packaging. That seemed
Comics.
okay except that we couldn’t think of a new
story that we wanted to do. The problem is
that the original series ends in a rather final
note. Neither one of us wanted to undo that
19
Part 3: In Space, No One
Can Hear You Draw

MM: You worked on a couple of movie adaptations WALTER: Alien was one of the best experiences I ever
with Archie, Close Encounters and Alien. You’ve said that had in comics doing a movie adaptation. Charlie
Close Encounters was a tough experience. How so? Lippincott was our liaison with 20th Century Fox and
Charlie was a comics fan. What that meant was he kinda
WALTER: It was the worst experience of my comics knew what we needed to do a good comic book. They
career. However, if that’s the worst experience, I’m in fine, didn’t want a lot of stuff out there, but Archie and I had
fine shape. In my humble opinion, I think Columbia was three different script revisions a couple months apart each.
really, really concerned about doing everything that Steven We ended up with some photographs. Early on, 20th
Spielberg wanted done. And because there was a lot of Century flew me over to England to see a rough cut of the
secrecy around the film, there was a berserko concern film. I saw a two-hour version of the film in December of
about keeping everything under wraps. What it amounted ’78. That was all principle
to was I was drawing Close Encounters photography—they were
with no reference. still doing the special
The film compa- effects. We got a tour of
ny allowed us to see the model shop. We could
a couple minutes of have taken pictures, but I
footage of the scene didn’t have a camera. I was
were Richard Dreyfuss kicking myself later for
and Melinda Dillon that, because they got
see the UFOs on the kind of stroppy about
country roads zooming sending us reference. We
around. We saw some had reference on the
stills of the actors in actors. Honestly, as far as
their costumes. And we I’m concerned, it made
saw some really, really all the difference in the
blurry 8" x 10"s of way the stuff looked.
pieces of the mother The other thing that
ship. That was it. And I was very cool was
wasn’t given any of the nobody had likeness
reference. I could see it, approvals back then or
then go home and work nobody exercised
on the comic the next them. Now, that’s one
month-and-a-half remem- of the difficult things
bering clearly what I had in doing movie adap-
seen. Also, Marvel didn’t tations because every-
have likeness rights, so we body has likeness
couldn’t use Dreyfuss or approvals and a lot of
Teri Garr or anybody else your creative energy
in the comic. We just had goes into making
to work from nothing. We these guys look like
had a script and that was it. they think they
Even the script we had was- look. I want to tell
n’t the final script. It made it the story. I think the important part of
very difficult to do. On the this is the story, but I’m an old retro guy. [laughter] In Alien I
balance it worked out pretty well, all things considered. was able to draw these characters as comic characters that
MM: How did that compare with your experience on Alien? looked kind of like the actors and actresses without going

32
berserk trying to make the likenesses work
as rendered versions of these people.
20th Century wasn’t really nuts about
whether the comic was exactly like the
movie. What that meant was we were able
to take bits from different treatments and
put them together in what we thought was
the best story. In the end, I thought we got
a comic that was a really good adaptation
of the film, both in spirit and of most of
the stuff that was in it. But it was nuts at
the end. We did the last 20 pages in a
week. It had to come out when the movie
came out. It’s something I’m really proud
of. And even better, it’s the first comic ever
on the New York Times Best-Seller List. I’m
not claiming any credit—it was Alien.
Anybody could have done it and gotten up
there. It was still kinda cool to do.
MM: Alien was also important to your
career in that it was the first big project
you worked on with John Workman.
WALTER: That’s right. I really did Alien
because of John. He was the art director and
letterer at Heavy Metal at that time. John got
a hold of me about doing Alien, and I believe
his original idea was to have Carmine
Infantino, who was no longer at DC, draw
the book and have me ink it. For some rea-
son I don’t remember now, I did two sample
pages from one of the Alien scripts—two dif-
ferent scenes, a page each. I had no refer- Previous Page: Before
ence so it’s not drawn as if it’s any of the Walter was hired as the
characters. Somewhere along the way I was penciler for Alien, he
given the job of penciling as well inking. drew up two sample
John was the letterer on that and that was pages. He had no photo
reference at this point,
the first time we’d worked together. I still did
only a script, and drew
some of the sound effects. Right in the
the Alien with long
beginning there’s some stuff where you’re tentacles.
getting this binary code. In the movie it’s on Next Page: On the left
the helmet visors. I did that. The other is Walter’s pre-reference
sound effect is the weird screaming beacon sample page, and on the
when they get the signal from the planet. I right is the same scene
took some press type and cut a bunch of it as drawn for publication.
up and rearranged it and made it red on blue Alien ™ and ©2006 20th
to get as much vibration out of it as I could. Century Fox Film Corp.
MM: Around this time—late ’78, early
’79—you helped found Upstart Studios.
WALTER: Several of us were looking for a
place to work that wouldn’t be in the middle
33

Above: This 1975
Batman illustration was
done for a Street
Enterprises portfolio.
Right: A page from
Batman #300. Inks by
Dick Giordano.
Next Page Top: Upstart
Studio compadres
Howard Chaykin and
Walter (with an assist by
Frank Miller) came up
with some very funny
one-pagers for Heavy
Metal.
Next Page Bottom:
Walter enters the world
of Battlestar Galactica.
Opening splash of
Battlestar Galactica #4.
Inks by Klaus Janson.
Batman ™ and ©2006 DC
Comics. Battlestar Galactica ™
and ©2006 Universal City
Studios.
of our own apartments. We thought we could split the cost
on something. The initial members were Howard
Chaykin, me, Val Mayerick, and Jim Starlin. I’m not sure,
it’s possible that Howard’s wife at the time was the one
who came up with the name Upstart. Maybe Starlin.
We looked around for a while and found a place on
West 29th Street. We had about 1000 square feet. It
was on the front of the building, and it had these big,
old windows and a big, clunky tile balcony out front
with a giant wall you could kind of peek over and see
down to 29th Street. You got a lot of views of the roofs
of New York. It was very cool. It was a nice place to work.
The membership rotated some over the years. Within
a year of our being there, Val Mayerick decided to move
back to Ohio. Jim Sherman came in. We knew Jim from
Continuity. Not long after that, Starlin moved upstate and
Frank Miller took that spot. That was the stable for a while.
Frank was doing his Daredevil work at that time, Howard was
doing American Flagg, I was doing Thor—it was a cool place to be.
We were all somewhat competitive.
Somewhere around the time Ronin started, Frank left and Gary Hallgren
moved in. He was a good guy. Howard moved out to the West Coast about ’85. We
just kept the three of us, then I moved in ’87. Ultimately, I think Gary moved out to Long
Island and Jim Sherman stayed and took it over as his apartment. He may still be in the
building. That’s a short history of Upstart. Some cool work came out of there.
MM: What were the advantages or
disadvantages of working with all the
other guys around?
WALTER: Mostly it was the advantage
of the location. And it was mostly fun, at
least for me. It was inspiring to see
Daredevil coming along. It was inspiring
to see American Flagg getting done. It was
annoying on both those counts as well.
[laughter] Mainly it was getting to see
other guys at work. If you had problems,
you could talk ’em over with them.
When you’re a freelancer, if you’re work-
ing at home it’s kind of a lonely life.
You’re used to your own company, it’s
not lonely in that sense, but you spend a
lot of time with yourself and your wife
and your dogs. Being part of a studio
means that you get out and you get to
interact with other creative people. That
can fire your own juices up.
MM: You did a few issues of Detective
around this time with Steve Englehart,
where you introduced Dr. Phosphorus.
WALTER: In two chapters, yes. I think
it was done as layouts rather than tight
pencils. Allen Milgrom inked it. I don’t
34
Part 4: “It’s Nice to Be Best
Known for Something”

MM: You were

kind of offered Thor
out of the blue?

WALTER: More or
less. Mark
Gruenwald offered
it to me. Mark and
I had talked about a
Thor idea that I had
had back when I
was in college. I
was a big Thor fan
back then—this
was the mid-’60s. I
came up with an
idea for a big Thor
story. I combined
Norse mythology
with “Marvel Norse
mythology” with
“Walter mythology”
and put together a
storyline.
The idea was
that in the summer
when the annuals
were available, one
month the story would start in Thor. The gist of
rest of the story would come out the same my idea
month in all the other Marvel Comics, was that
which at the time was about ten or eleven the Odinsword, in actual fact,
titles. A month after these eleven issues was the blade that Surtur would use to
came out, the Thor Annual would come out destroy the Nine Worlds when the time
with the climax of the story. came.
The basis of the idea was that Stan and The general idea for my original story
Jack had in the Thor mythology in the was that Asgard wakes up one morning and
comics the Odinsword. It was a big, honk- the Odinsword is gone. Odin had guarded
ing sword that sat in the middle of Asgard. the sword, had kept it from Surtur all these Previous Page: Page
Their story was that if it were ever with- millennia. It was not just a sword, but in from the Star Slammers
drawn from its scabbard, the universe would some way part of Surtur’s essence. Surtur, in graphic novel.
end. My story was that the nature of the the meantime, lusted for the sword and built Above: Promotional art
Odinsword had moved into folk legend up spell after spell in Muspelheim, where he from Thor #336 heralding
among the gods. Only Odin really knew lived, until eventually the sword winks out Walter’s new direction.
what the sword was at that point. The other of existence in Asgard and into Surtur’s Star Slammers ™ and ©2006
thing that Jack and Stan had done was cre- hand. But the Eternal Flame with which he Walter Simonson. Thor ™ and
©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.
ate an Eternal Flame burning in Asgard. The has to light the sword is not part of Surtur,
45

Right: Surtur plans come
together. Page 29 of Thor
#345.
Below: Pencils for
Surtur’s entry in the
Marvel Universe series.
Next Page: There’s a
new sheriff in town! Page
25 of Thor #339.
Beta Ray Bill, Surtur ™ and
©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.
so he now has to go to Asgard
to light the sword.
Surtur finally reaches Asgard,
breaks the rainbow bridge. Much
of what’s actually in the con-
frontation with Surtur, Thor,
Odin, and Heimdall in the comic
is right from the “Annual” I drew
as a student. I was delighted to do
the book. I thought I would do my
Surtur story. I had to make some
adjustments because the
Odinsword had been destroyed in
Thor #300. I knew more about writ-
ing by then, so I didn’t try to write
one 13- or 14-episode story. I tried
to write shorter chapters that were
complete stories, and they would
advance the overall plot toward
Surtur, which I did with Beta Ray Bill,
Malekith the Accursed, and others
that I did over that batch of issues.
When Mark gave me the book he
really gave me carte blanche.
I think what was going on
is the book wasn’t selling so
well. How much in danger
of cancellation it was, I
don’t know. It was-
n’t a bad place to
be. It’s the kind thing where if the book had not sold and gone
nowhere, nobody would have said, “Simonson, what a terrible guy.”
They would have said, “The book was tanking anyway. Nobody could
have saved it.” As the book did better, they go, “Wow. Simonson. What
a brilliant talent!” [laughter] It was a no lose situation in that regard.
Mark emphasized that he didn’t care what I did with the book.
He thought it should be shaken up. He gave me a piece of paper
that had about five or six of his ideas for Thor. I remember none of
them now except in one of them Thor died and somebody else found
the hammer and became the new Thor. I don’t think I swiped that
for Beta Ray Bill literally, but it’s similar in some ways.
The other basic idea was that when I get on books, I try to
do some story that’s about the book’s core concerns. Most
comics have thematic material that runs through them. I’m
probably most familiar with Thor. In Thor, for example,
almost anybody who stayed on Thor for any length of time
did a Ragnarok story. It’s bound up in Norse mythology. I did
it myself twice in the time I was doing the book. I did “Ragnarok
and Roll,” a title Howard Chaykin provided me with, which was the
Surtur story, and I did “The Midgard Serpent,” which was part
of the Ragnarok story. Those are the great themes and they
need to be re-done from time to time. They need to be
rethought. In a way, I think super-hero comics tell a few
simple truths. There’s evil in the world that needs to be
fought. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. I think
46
those themes are bound up in the comic through the I’ve said elsewhere that I used a horse’s skull for the
mythology. I think that’s why the story eventually comes basis of Bill’s facial design. That’s because I wanted to
back. Each book has its own themes and its own identity. combine the aspects of death that a skull represents
When I did Thor, I thought about what I wanted to do, with the beauty of the living horse. When Bill’s own
and I also prefer to do some story that hasn’t been done hammer was forged I used a more Norse motif, a war
before if that’s possible. In Thor, I thought it would be fun hammer motif, for the design. When Bill and Thor went
to do a story in which somebody else picked up the ham- out to fight their duel without hammers, Odin slightly
mer. The very first issue of Thor shows an inscription on stacked the deck in Bill’s favor by putting them in a fiery
Thor’s hammer suggesting that anybody who was worthy world. Thor’s a Norse god. He’s from the land of ice and
could possess the power of Thor. The idea is the inscrip- snow. He would have been more comfortable in an icy,
tion on the hammer suggests that somebody besides Thor snowy realm. Bill comes from a fiery place. What Odin’s
and Odin could pick it up. Stan and Jack once had Loki really doing is hazarding the life of his son to try to find
pick it up. He had some extra juice from the Norn Queen. another warrior to stand by him at Ragnarok. I thought
Apparently that just nullified the inscription and he that’s the kind of guy Odin was. He was very powerful,
walked around carrying the hammer. At the time I was but he thought long term. He was always planning. He
going “Wait a minute. Does this actually work like that?” I was really trying, even knowing they were doomed in
just ignored that. [laughter] My own feeling was that there the long run, to set the odds more in his favor when the
weren’t any characters in the Marvel Universe who could Twilight came. He’s willing to gamble in the face of
pick it up or they would have by that time. I thought I fate. He’s willing to gamble his son’s life.
needed to invent somebody new to pick up the
hammer. That’s where Beta Ray Bill came from. I
know existing characters have picked up the ham-
mer since I wrote my story. I knew that writing my
story would be letting the genie out of the bottle.
Once you do a story and people like it, somebody
will go back and do their own version.
I chose an alien because that seems further away
from humanity. He’s got a little humanity in him,
but that seems more exotic. I made him look like a
monster because in short form comics, symbols are
very important. You use symbols to get at meaning.
One of the ways that manifests itself in simple form
is that, mostly, bad guys are ugly and good guys are
handsome. Except, of course, if they’re bad girls, in
which case they’re beautiful but don’t wear a lot of
clothes. [laughter] I drew Bill as a monster, because
readers would think he was evil. In fact, that was
pretty much what happened. When Beta Ray Bill
appeared and picked up the hammer, I got a lot of
crabby letters. Fans knew the inscription. They
knew that only the worthy could pick up the ham-
mer. I didn’t get any letters from people saying,
“You’re toying with us. This guy must be worthy.”
Nobody. There may be 85,000 guys out there now
who say, “I knew that,” but really, nobody got it.
It turns out Beta Ray Bill really was a noble guy
who had gone through hell to become what he
was. He served a noble purpose and was a being
for whom the hammer was going to be incredibly
useful in the defense of his people. I designed him
as a monster to mislead the reader. What you want
to do many times is play fair with the reader but
mislead them at the same time, so when you get
where you actually want to go, they’ll be surprised
by it, but it won’t seem like a deus ex machina.
47

Right: One of the most
memorable covers of all
time—Thor #337.
Below: Pencils for the
Beta Ray Bill entry in
Marvel Universe.
Next Page: Bill gets a
hammer of his own in
Thor #339.
Beta Ray Bill, Thor and all relat-
ed characters ™ and ©2006
Marvel Characters, Inc.
MM: Where did Beta Ray Bill’s name
come from?
WALTER: A lot of old science fiction.
When aliens and humans meet, every-
body can talk because everybody’s carry-
ing universal translators which somehow
seem to be able to work under any con-
ditions, which I thought was great. I
loved that stuff. But I think there are
some words that just wouldn’t translate.
I didn’t know what the machine would
do. Would it give you gobbledygook?
I wanted a couple different things
for a name for Bill. One is I wanted a
common name even though Bill is, as
a representative of his own people,
not a common guy. He went through
hell to become chosen as a gladiator
for his people, but he was kind of an
everyman. In that regard, I wanted an
everyman kind of name. My original
idea was to call him Beta Ray Jones. I
picked Beta Ray because it has a sci-
ence-fictiony sound to it. I didn’t go
with Jones,
because at
that time there
were too many Joneses in the Marvel
Universe. There was Rick Jones, Marvel
was doing Indiana Jones, they had Louise Jones as an editor. I don’t
know if Bruce Jones was writing for them at that time, but there
seemed like a lot of Joneses floating around. I thought one more
Jones was one Jones too many. [laughter] I thought Bill was a very
common name. Also, it had the advantage of having that Marvel
alliteration that so many names had. I just liked Beta Ray Bill.
I figure that whatever Beta Ray Bill’s real name is, it doesn’t
come out of the translator in any kind of comprehensible form. It
comes out as Beta Ray Bill. Whatever his real name is, that’s not
it. It’s something that human vocal chords can’t pronounce.
MM: The cover to Thor #337 has become one of
your most recognizable pieces.
WALTER: [laughs] And it’s so simple, too!
MM: What do you think there is about it that
caught people’s attention?
WALTER: Maybe I hit on all the right symbols at
the right moment. I’m not sure. It’s a very simple cover.
It says in one gesture exactly what the book was about.
At the time I was doing it, I remember being told that
Thor had the only logo that Marvel had left from the ’60s that
was unchanged. I knew a guy named Alex Jay who was a graphic
designer. I talked to him about doing a new logo for Thor. He
48
Part 5: “X” Marks
the Spot

MM: During your run on Thor you also drew one of the together really easily. That would turn out to be true
most reprinted issues of X-Men, issue #17, where Rogue whether we were writing the same comic, as in the case
joined. How did that happen? of Meltdown, whether I was drawing and she was writing,
or whether I was writing and she was editing. Working
WALTER: Pretty simply, actually. It was a complete with her was just a breeze. It was really such a pleasure.
coincidence that was the issue I did. Weezie was editing I’d love to do it again sometime.
the X-Men back then. Paul Smith had gotten on the
book. As I remember it, Paul could do one issue a month. MM: Could you tell me some about creating the
Somewhere in there they decided to do a double Death/Archangel character?
issue. The problem with that was that was almost
two books. I guess the expectation was that Paul
would not be able to do that much work in a
single month, so they were instantly a month
behind and needed a fill-in. Weezie called me
to see if I would draw an issue of the X-Men. It
was a fill-in in terms of the art. It was not a fill-
in in terms of the writing. Chris just wrote
what would have been the next issue. I did the
pencils and Bob Wiacek inked it. That’s exactly
what happened. It was just the luck of the
draw it happened to be the issue where Rogue
quit being a bad girl and became a good girl.

MM: Also during your run on Thor, you

started your run on X-Factor. Did that hap-
pen because Weezie was writing it?

WALTER: Yeah, I think so. She was writing

it and Jackson Guice had gotten off the
book. I don’t think there was a regular pen-
ciler after Jackson, so the book was open. I
don’t know if Weezie asked me or if the edi-
tor asked me. In any case, I got tipped as
the regular penciler from issue #10 on.
One of the reasons I did it was because
Weezie was writing it. I’d worked with her
as an editor on Galactica. I watched her
write other stuff and watched her as an
editor. I really liked what she did and X-
Factor allowed me to have a chance to
work with her as a writer.

MM: How did you two work together

on the book?

WALTER: Very easily. We probably

talked over plots, but Weezie was the
writer and I was the artist. We worked
59
 WALTER: When we were doing X-Factor, one of the things
that we thought about pretty early on after I’d got on as the
penciler—and maybe Weezie’d thought about this before—was
that the original X-Men who became X-Factor were very much
like the guys they’d been back in the early ’60s. The Beast was a
guy who could leap 15 feet into the air and grab hold of a bar.
Angel’s a guy who could fly for an hour at 60 miles an hour.
Iceman could do ice. Jean Grey was telepathic, and Cyclops
had his beams. What they seemed to us at that time was some-
what underpowered for where comics had gone. They really
seemed out of sync in some ways with where the bad guys
were by the mid- to late ’80s. One of the projects we under-
took was kind of a reclamation project where we decided to
juice up the characters in a way that would make them more
powerful on their own terms and therefore more in sync with
how we viewed the Marvel Universe at the time.
Some of the characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey, you
didn’t have to do anything. In the old days, Cyclops could
knock over a toothpick, these days he could knock over a
building. In other words, since his was a visual power of that
sort, you didn’t actually have to stick his finger in an electric
socket and juice him up any more. You could do whatever
you wanted to do and that would work. With telepathy and
telekinetic powers, Jean Grey was the same way. But we
needed something else for the other characters. Archangel’s
story was our Angel story where we cut off his wings. We
did horrible things to him. He got kidnapped by
Apocalypse and came back as this new guy with these tech-
no wings and a new outfit and was much more powerful.
We did that with Iceman. His was in a crossover with Thor.
We did the same sort of thing with the Beast where we turned him back
into the furry Beast and he could then be more powerful and faster.
The Angel/Archangel storyline was neat, but it wasn’t isolated in the
context of what we were doing with X-
Factor in general. It was part of this
retraining program, if you will, to get
these characters upgraded to new levels.

MM: One thing I found interesting for

the time—it’s more common now—was
you had this huge battle with
Apocalypse in issue #25, lots of
destruction. Then in #26 you actual-
ly had the clean-up.

WALTER: [laughs] You’d have to

ask my wife. She was the writer.
It just seemed reasonable. I
don’t know what else to say
about it, but it seemed like it
was a nice follow-up.
Something I will say
about those issues is if
you go back and look
at issues #24, #25 and

60
Part 6: Let’s Do the
Time Warp Again

MM: Also in ’89 you began working on Fantastic Four. advance. I got to issue #300, where I was going to do a
You started out only writing that. Had you always new team, and I was told right about then, “Oh, by the
intended to draw that as well? way, we’re putting Reed and Sue back in the FF. You can
use them for an issue, and that’s it.” End of story.
WALTER: Yes. What happened was I had been the writer I was pretty annoyed. I’d been working up storylines
of The Avengers. I wrote eleven issues of The Avengers, but I with permission for months, and watched it be eviscerat-
had a problem. The problem was Marvel had reached an ed. So I thought, “This just isn’t working out. Whatever
editorial position where if characters were in other books, you have to have to write this book, I don’t have it. I don’t
you had to take into account what was happening in the know if I’m not flexible enough or if the conditions have
other books. From my days on Thor, I kinda like having a changed, but I simply can’t write stories like this.” So I got
long-range story idea. I write shorter sto- off The Avengers with issue #300 having
ries but I’ll be heading for some goal. just put a new team together. I had a
What happened with The Avengers whole bunch of stories lined up to
was I found very quickly that I do. About five seconds after I quit, I
kept having to alter my sto- was offered Fantastic Four, because
ries in the midst of writing Steve had left the title. The editorial
them. I’d have an issue powers that be had
out, be writing a new decided that the
plot, and they’d Fantastic Four
say, “Oh, by should be Reed,
the way, next Sue, Johnny and
issue Thor’s Ben. I think it was
out in space. Ralph Macchio
You can’t use who offered me
him.” the FF.
The break- Ironically, I had
ing point came all these stories
because I put Reed lined up for
and Sue in The Avengers. They
Avengers. Steve were stories that,
Englehart had been among other
writing the FF for things, involved
some time. He wrote Reed and Sue. I
Reed and Sue out of just pulled the
the FF. I thought, stories over to the Fantastic
“Wouldn’t it be inter- Four. For the first story arc,
esting to have these a lot of which would have
guys in the Avengers?” been in The Avengers, I
You’ve got Captain borrowed Thor and Iron
America and Reed, Man. Because it was a
both accustomed to guest-star situation,
the habit of com- unlike The Avengers, I
mand. You’ve got got to use some of
some interesting the original Avengers
character interactions. in this story the way I couldn’t have
I got permission to do used them in The Avengers itself. I did
this six months in
65

Above: Iron Man and
Thor drop in to say hi.
Panel from Fantastic Four
#337.
Right: Not long before
he took over Fantastic
Four, Walter was able to
warm up on Galactus in
this cover to Silver Surfer
#10.
Next Page: The Thing
kicks some Jurassic in FF
#345.
Fantastic Four, Eternity,
Galactus, Iron Man, Silver
Surfer, Thor ™ and ©2006
Marvel Characters, Inc.
my initial story with destroying everything. He sends them back
Galactus and the to get it. They get it from his headquarters,
Dreaming Celestial. Then bring it back to him, and he uses it and
I just blew Thor and Iron destroys everything in that universe, but
Man off the time sled. not every universe everywhere else. Reed
They presumably went and the crew get out just in time.
right back to Earth, When they use the Nullifier, stuff just
because they were in their gets white. I have a big circle expanding
own books the next with nothing in it until finally a double
month. Then I was off page spread of nothing except down in the
and running with the corner is the time sled racing away trying
Fantastic Four. to get out of the boundary of the universe
before it all disappears. Two things about
MM: You talked before that. One is that on the back of one of
about not wanting to those pages was an ad for the Dick Tracy
bring back Galactus for movie with Warren Beatty which was all
the 43rd time unless you black, so it shows through this blank page
could do something differ- beautifully. It’s like, “Hi! We’re racing away
ent with from a giant
him. You
did defi-
nitely do
something
different
with him
by having
him eat
the uni-
verse.
WALTER: He was doing
what he was built to
do—eat everything.
[laughter] It gave me a
shot at that. It also gave
me a shot to do some-
thing that hadn’t been
done before, which was
use the Ultimate
Nullifier. It was a
device from the origi-
nal Galactus story. I
think it had been men-
tioned a couple of
times, but I don’t
think it had ever been
used before.
The FF are in an
alternate universe
where Galactus is
devouring the entire
universe and it turns
out that the Ultimate
Nullifier is Galactus’
last failsafe against
66
picture of Dick Tracy.” [laughter] The other thing is that
Marvel reprinted the story a few years ago in some
paperback and they dropped the extra page, which I
have to say I was very annoyed about. It’s a double-
page spread. I know there’s nothing there. That’s the
storytelling decision to make that sequence more pow-
erful. Half a space of nothing is not as effective.
MM: You had a lot of fun playing with time in your
run on Fantastic Four. Are time travel stories things
you’re interested in?
WALTER: I always loved time travel stories. I love The
Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. When I was a kid I read a
book called Twists in Time, by Murray Leinster. It’s six
short stories that are probably the first time stories I
ever read. The year-and-a-half I was on the Fantastic
Four I was able to do a lot of time fiddling. The entire
run turns out to be one giant time fiddle in order to get
back to where they started.
MM: One of my favorite parts in the time travel story
was the dinosaur island with the FF and soldiers.
WALTER: It was great. I’m known for being a dinosaur
67
fan, but in fact I’ve very rarely drawn dinosaurs in the
comics I’ve done. What that story was, aside from being a
treat to draw dinosaurs, is that when I was a kid I
belonged to the Weekly Reader Book Club. One of the
books I read back then was called Dangerous Island.
Essentially, three little kids on a raft get washed out to sea
by accident. After drifting for a time, they end up on a
little island. One morning they wake up and they discov-
er the island is sinking back into the ocean. It was very
scary. I loved the book and when I did the FF I thought
of that book and the sinking island, or in this case the
time-displaced island. That’s what that was inspired by.
MM: And you got to draw the Thing fighting a T-rex.
WALTER: What could be better, honestly? [laughter]
MM: One of your better known Fantastic Four stories
was the one drawn by Arthur Adams.
WALTER: That was fun. We did a three-issue arc that
was supposed to buy me some time. In actual fact, I did
other stuff and didn’t end up getting any time out of it.
[laughter] I talked to Arthur about doing it. We were old
pals. He was game to do it.
Part 7: Gods and
Champions

MM: The next series you worked on was Michael MM: I just have to ask: How did it feel to help save the
Moorcock’s Multiverse. Did Michael contact you about that multiverse?
or did DC?
WALTER: It felt great. Y’know I got a headache when
WALTER: I think probably Stuart Moore at DC called up that was done. Playing a game with the gods. It was
out of the blue and asked if I’d be interested in doing it. I tough. [laughter] It was really fun. That was a riot when
knew Michael’s work and I’d read his books back in the Michael put me in the comic.
’60s and ’70s. I’m a big Elric fan, and I’d met him at
All characters
Upstart some years earlier. I jumped at the chance ™ and ©2006
Michael Moorco
ck.
to work with him and do some new material rather
than doing an adaptation of existing work.
MM: Did you work Marvel style on this?

WALTER: That was full script. The way we

ended up working, I pretty much had complete
freedom to break the stuff down as I saw fit. I
had the script so I could make sure that all the
words were there and everything read properly.

MM: You did some rather interesting page

designs in that book. For example, you had Rose
walking down a road and the road became a
panel border.

WALTER: Michael’s stuff is pretty high con-

cept and I thought it seemed appropriate. I
worked pretty hard to make the page layouts
unusual, but I thought they fit the story he
was giving me. He was doing three stories at
once with three different artists and the
“Moonbeams and Roses” story I was doing
was in some ways the spaciest. I was trying
to reflect that to a certain degree in the way
the book was laid out.

MM: The art itself was very complex. Did

it take you longer to do than other projects?

WALTER: It took as long as a regular issue

and I was only doing eight to twelve pages a
month. I could never have done the whole
comic in a month with all that stuff in it. I
was just barely able to keep afloat with the
shorter chunks. The last issue I did all but
one page because the stories all collapsed
into one thread by the end of it. I did the
entire thread where it all came together.

81
 MM: You did nearly all the covers
for Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.

WALTER: Yeah. John Byrne

asked me to do the covers for the
book. And I said sure. New Gods
stuff? I love it.

MM: When you’re only the

cover artist, what kind of direc-
tion do you get about what to
Right: Cover art for do with the covers?
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
#3. WALTER: It varies as the times,
Below: Walter tells the places, and circumstances dic-
story of Kanto’s origin. tate. I think on that stuff John
Next Page: Justeen’s was far enough ahead we most-
first appearance—from
ly knew what the stories were
Orion #1, and Darkseid
going to be. I tried to find a
and Orion have at it in a
two-page spread from
good hook in the story, I prob-
Orion #5. ably talked to Paul
Kupperberg, who was the edi-
New Gods and all related
characters ™ and ©2006 DC
tor, and I probably talked to
Comics. John. John may have had
some ideas. I don’t remember
now. I would do up a sketch
from whatever the ideas
were, show it to Paul and be
off and running.

MM: In Jack Kirby’s Fourth

World you did a “Tales of the
New Gods” back-up. Was
that something John asked you to do?

WALTER: He did a few back-ups himself and we

were talking on a regular basis because I was doing
the covers. I don’t know now if he asked me to do a
Kanto story or if I brought Kanto to him. I like the
character Kanto. I thought it would be fun to do a
semi-origin story about why this New God was walk-
ing around in Renaissance clothes and with
Renaissance manners. That gave me a chance to do it.

MM: That led into you doing Orion. You went for
the big stuff right away with the Anti-Life
Equation and the battle with Darkseid. Did you
just want to get that out of the way so you could
move onto something else?

WALTER: That’s exactly right. I picked up from

the end of John’s run and took care of some story
threads. John had some stuff he suggested. I want-
ed to get the Darkseid/Orion fight out, because
once that’s done, then you’re not sure what going
to happen next. That’s the condition every comic
book reader should be in. You should not know
82
what’s going to happen next.
MM: You added a new character to the New
Gods pantheon—Justeen. What can you say
about her creation?
WALTER: I borrowed the title of one of the
real de Sade’s books. I’ve never read the books,
but I used to work in a bookstore in the late
’60s when Grove Press was issuing all that stuff.
So I knew the titles.
Desaad was a character who had been
around a long time and I thought Justeen was a
little like doing Lorelei in Thor. She served
some of the same purposes as Desaad, but you
give her a different spin. She obviously has a
crush on Darkseid. She’s ruthless in pursuing
what she wants, which is to be Darkseid’s right-
hand girl. You could have her do stuff that
Desaad would be doing, but when she’s doing
it, it’s new and it’s a little different.
The same’s true with Lorelei. I introduced
Lorelei into Thor because the Enchantress had
been around for so long and gone through the
83
same motions a million times. I thought having
her younger, cuter sister as part of the Thor mix
would give me a bit different quality to the
stories when she was involved with them
rather than just using the Enchantress.
Eventually, when I cleaned Desaad’s clock, then
I had Justeen to step in. [laughter]
MM: Your page layout was a bit more ornate
in Orion. Was that a result of doing Multiverse?
WALTER: Some yes, some no. I had some long-
range plans for Orion that never came to fruition.
We had two years and I’m delighted, but I had
about a five-year plan. Part of that involved
bringing back the Old Gods. We were going to
find out who the Old Gods were, what they were
about. So, especially in the early issues of Orion, I
have all these heads in the corners watching.
Those were the Old Gods watching before they
would send one of their representatives back to
discuss things with Orion. That’s what that was
about. It was ornate but it had some story value
that was never used in the comic.
*<CA32 >3<17:A 4=@ / 1=D3@ B= / @3>@7<B
1=::31B7=< =4 B63 L"/<6C<B3@M AB@7>
"/<6C<B3@ J /<2 I =;71A

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE

LINK BELOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK!

Modern
Masters:
WALTER
SIMONSON
by Roger Ash &
Eric Nolen-Weathington

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-

WEATHINGTON, these trade
paperbacks are devoted to the
BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS
ARTISTS! Each book contains
RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK
direct from the artist’s files, plus
a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW
(including influences and their
views on graphic storytelling),
DELUXE SKETCHBOOK
SECTIONS, and more!
(128-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT
(Digital Edition) $4.95
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=387

100